Cagito ergo sum
by Chaz01
Summary: What is reality? A serise of moments that are giving meaning by systems that humans forge from nothing but their own egos. How much of these systems and subsiquent reality depend on where...


Cageto ergo sum  
-Descartes  
  
"Where am I?"  
  
There is no where here.  
  
"What?"  
  
Here, there, big, small, all these are caused by relationships to the world. Things have not a property that sets them here or there, things simply are here or there in relation to things that are not here or there  
  
"Your saying I define everything by it's causal relationship on reality?"  
  
We are saying all you can understand is something's causal relationship with reality. But we have forsaken this relationship and now you and us are here.  
  
"What does that mean?"  
  
Nietzsche called it a void, an empty and endless hole that has nothing but itself within it. Mathematics calls this the empty set. Lau Tzu called this tao, used but never used up. Jewish mystics termed this realm the kether, the highest plan of existence. Christ called it the incomprehenicilbe father and the Gnostics called it the pure masculine feminine virgin. It is from this state that the world comes and to this state it goes. We shall call it the realm of numina, as did Kant.  
  
"Kant was deluded. There are no numina within phenomena, no ground nature to things. The physical realm is all that is."  
  
Be careful, not everything that is can be measured.  
  
"Yes it can. Even the thoughts in my head are simple biochemical and electrical connections. The idea of a true Self, of a numina, of a Soul, is an absurdity. There is nothing more to me then the neurons that are within my brain."  
  
Then why does your existence persist? You have no body to house a brain, and yet some element of you marches on. To say that everything can be expressed through neurons, to even say that neurons mean something, requires faith.  
  
"No, it requires science."  
  
And yet in the end is science not itself based on faith in reality. If everything is in change, why should we hold physical laws to be constant? To say that neuron a does x now and, due to this, will continue to do x is a statement of faith. Inductive reasoning is a statement of faith.  
  
"Absurd. There is no faith."  
  
To even say one exists is faith. To function in reality is faith.  
  
"Why am I here?"  
  
Ahh, a human question. Must there be a reason for things to be? Is not a question of why a statement of faith that there is a why? You exist and will continue to do so.  
  
"How?"  
  
Because you think and must continue to do so. Descartes was right, you think and therefore are.  
  
"What occurred?"  
  
The current jargon that your people have invented is that a sea of durath opened up and consumed you within itself. Though there are other ways of saying this. You stand now in what some call limbo, some bardo, some purgatory. A realm where the ideas of being and non being, living and non living, become united again.  
  
"Why am I still whole? Why have I not yet dispersed?"  
  
Ahh, you have not joined nirvana because your soul is that of a bodhisattva.  
  
"Bodhisattva?"  
  
You have not yet rejoined the Thing that Is because you have not made that choice.  
  
"I was never given that choice..."  
  
Your continued existence and your insistence that there is a Self and a World is proof enough that you have not yet surrendered your ego... You still have work to do and still have souls to save.  
  
"And why should I care about them? What have they done? All human relationships can only end with pain because all relationships are temporary. Even the most pure love can only yield pain."  
  
And yet it is through that pain that your choices are validated. It is from that hurt that meaning comes, that truth and beauty and honor come. That poetry comes.  
  
"Poetry, a fools game played by idiots, self deluded people who think life is worth a damn."  
  
Tell us, can it be any way. You are running from void as much as them.  
  
"I run from nothing..."  
  
You run from the pain within yourself. There is a lack, an emptiness. This is what Sarte used to define man, the one element that made him, that makes all of you, human. You all run from it, in the end, and all run to drugs. You hide behind knowledge, alcohol, needels and sex. You decided that rather then facing the facts, you'd burn the world to ash. You'd rather destroy the world then find hope from it.  
  
"Why"  
  
Because hope would mean that you should go on living. Because right would make you capable of wrong. Because God can judge you.  
  
"And what kind of loving God would put this pain within us?"  
  
He didn't, you all did it to yourselves...  
  
Both voices fell silent. And nothing but the endless expanse of infinite existence sprawled out before them. Neither author nor muse can describe what this state was. Lovecraft claimed that when one began to experience it, one lost one's mind. This is incorrect, for the mind is the only thing that remains. It is this mind that enables existence, this ability to be thinking. Yet what is pure thought like? The only phrase that adequately describes this state is that it was like looking upon everything at once and nothing at all. The doors of perception had been opened and only a substantial amount of LSD can replicate this experience. It was as if the body was not and simultaneous was the void. It was endless and black and yet the blackness seemed physical and real. It was as if the darkness was another part of the Self. It seemed warm and inviting, like the night that Juliet cried for. It was a tangible nothingness, a nothingness that one could wrap around oneself. A nothing that was as familiar to one as an arm or leg.  
  
The events of the day slowly began to force themselves into the cognition of one of the sources of the voice. Though both source and voice are misnomers, it is the best metaphor to express the inexpressible. The being that was once known as him and, more specifically as Xeno, and this grain of Xeno that still exsisted, began to see the past come alive again.  
  
The morning had progressed as a thousand other mornings had. Of course this is a purely human thing to do, to say that a thousand other mornings had been like this. This day, like all others to come before it and all that have progressed from it, was the first day of genesis. The Gnostics claimed that time was an illusion, created by an evil demon known as Idepolato (spelling?) to keep humanity in check. The basis of this is true, time is indeed an illusion, but it, much like Kant's logic, must be accepted as valid in order to continue on in the metaphysical plan that you have chosen. To be truthful, the day was a river that one could not set foot in twice, as Heraclites had told you, but because the river looked the same, people thought it was the same. They were both right and wrong in this regard, for the river was in shift, but the shift was embodied in the water. Just as ripples on a pond change, but the nature of the water does not.  
  
Xeno had rolled out of his bed to the tune of a song by Bob Dylan. This lyric in particular struck him as he awoke, ' I know this evenings empire has returned into sand, vanished from my hand, left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.' His hand reached over, via and elaborate pattern of neuron transitions and muscle contractions. Of course this all depended on the level one looked at. The particles that made his being up increased in entropy and yet through these random movements, his cells came to be. These, in turn, formed his organs and these enabled his self to function. The self in turn transubstantiated the Self, the real element of thought, the numina of man. He rose tiredly and did a few half hearted stretches. This was to ensure that the stiff neck he had been getting as of late was kept at bay.  
  
He then made his bed and took from it the book he had fallen asleep reading. The title of the book blazed forth and it read ' Beyond good and evil' by Nietzsche. He picked it up and examined it. He had read this tome at least a thousand times. He could quote it with the same confidence and accuracy that an acshent Greek quoted Homer and that a modern fundamentalist quoted the bible. All people have a personal mythology, a way to relate everything that occurs in reality to the Self in a coherent way. This book was the base of his. The author said, basically, that there was no Truth, no pattern to reality, but that in order to live, one needed to forge one's own. One needed a will to power, a reason for being. The author claimed that most were content to follow mindlessly another's will to power, were willing to answer hard questions with formulated answers. 'Why am I here? Because Darwin or Jesus put me here.' These statements lacked both meaning and truth. In the end, the reason for being was the reason you choose for being, but this reason had to be your own. It had to come forth from you, like a child from a mother. The idea was as invalid, of course, but it was yours. And because it was yours, it was tailored to your needs and wants. Those to weak to face the fact that there was nothing were cattle, weak and stupid, doomed and destined to do the same 9-5 job on into infinity. There were 2 types of people, obermunch and everyone else. The obermunch were those who caused changed, the great people. The others were even more meaningless then the great ones. He set the book gently onto his nightstand.  
  
Why did he agree to pilot eva? Was it for the good of man perhaps? No, man was doomed anyways. The history of man was written in blood and today's savior's would become the next days supper weapons. Man was a suicidal monkey that nature had the mistake of giving a seeming intelligence to. Was it for his own good? Yes, in a way. He piloted the eva in order to fully become that which he is. He flew the system because he learned from it, became more complete in it. He found a certain peace sitting within his unit 3, as if in a mother's embrace, and he enjoyed it. To hell with the rest of the world, the eva enabled his growth and this evolution to nothingness from nothingness was all he had.  
  
He slowly put on his clothing, which were cheap wall mart shorts and a shirt that said 'have you hugged a nihilist today?' He put on sandals, but wore socks as well. Finally he put on his glasses. He said ' let there be light' with a goofy, half smile on his face and the computer answered with lights. His room was a mess, books of philosophy, theology, mysticism, neuroscience, quantum physics and one copy of the epic, paradise lost, lay strewn about on his floor. Of course no one cared how he kept his room. His mother had died, at some point or other and he had left his father. He had fled to this new place, to this Zion. This had become his sanctuary and the people within his family.  
  
NERV branch 2 was very different then 1. It was built in the desert, on ground that native Americans had claimed was scared. They thought that this would be the first ground to rejoin the Great Spirit. The building was quite a contrast to it's surroundings. One would ride along for miles without even a hint of human life and then bam. It rose from the desert as if spawned by it. The sun glinted off the pyramids sleek body sending a glare for miles around. There was no reason that it should be hidden underground, like it's sister, and so it was allowed to remain in the open air. It was an impressive sight.  
  
Because of it's isolation, everyone lived at the base and so a small city had rose up before the base of the monument man had built to himself. It was rare for anyone to leave this city and rare for anyone to enter. It had become another world, a reality onto itself. It was here that Xeno was tutored, here that he lived and worked. It was here that the religion of science was also allowed to prosper, to exist. The god that everyone bent there knee to was the god of rationality.  
  
The pope of this neo Vatican was a man named Duke. Duke was the commander, an old man who had been lost in academia for years. He was a kindly man and it showed that he was not military. His mannerisms were more like that of a grandfather then that of a commander. He treated all who were under him as children and cared for each a great deal. He was the kind of person who could walk down any street and point out the apartment of every person on the street. He went out of his way to make sure everything and everyone worked smoothly. He had gray hair, was bold, and had a full beard. He looked like the perfect professor for a college, which, in his heart, was what he still was. Yet he was commander of the base. He often, jokingly, called this place the mystical city on the hill that Tomas Aquinas had spoken of in Suma Theological. The city of God of Augustus and the Utopia of Moore were other names the base went by.  
  
His second had been appointed by a committee that no one ever spoke of. She was a general in the UN army before coming to this post. She had several scares on her face and people, behind her back, called her captain Ahab. This was an apt description of her because she was perpetually chasing something she could never have. She was fighting demons that were within her mind and that could not be beaten by the death of her enemies or destruction of the angels. She was trying to prove herself a woman by beating all men. Yet this was not due to outside predigest, although surely in the past there was some, it was due to her own insecurities. She doubted that she was a worthwhile human being and so attempted to prove herself. Yet, the harder she tried, the father she got from being a person. She had warmed up a great deal in the past years, but she still had a cold and monotone voice when she spoke. The voice was not melancholy, but perpetually annoyed. She had green hair and gray eyes. She may have been attractive, but that is for someone who is a poet to say.  
  
The other person of significance was the Science officer. He was a fat jolly man who resembled Santa to a great degree. He was a kindly man who had been married to his work for years. He loved his job like others loved a woman or man. It was all he had. His green eyes had a certain sadness within them, the same kind of look an old but content person gets. They had the look of one who was tormented by what might have been. He seemed content though. He did not play within the same reality as everyone else. For instance, he would sometimes, in mid conversation, walk away from whoever he was talking to. This was because he had just had some new idea and needed to work it out. This apparent rudeness was accepted as a simple eccentricity.  
  
There were, of course, the technicians who ran about perpetually making things go. If the scientists and commanders were to be called Eloí, then these were most certainly the Mortlocks. It was on their backs that the world around these people function and it is with their labor that things worked. It was these people who took the blueprint of an architected and made it a reality. Even as Xeno left his room they scurried about like ants, each offering to Xeno a smile or a nod as they rushed past. They seemed busy today.  
  
And this seeming matched with reality, for today was the day. Eva 3 had been given a gift that none before had received, the gift of an S2 engine. This would be the first of a new type of evas, the first off an assembly line that the committee that no one spoke of was setting up. It was irony that the busy little Mortlocks and the above ground Eloí would be sewing the seeds of their own destruction. Xeno made his way down the hall.  
  
He had turned left from his room and was now walking towards the locker room. He would but on his plug suit and get into his Eva. If all went well he would soon be on his ay to Japan. He had read the psych profiles of the other three pilots and he was informed that a fifth was being sought. Out of the pilots, 2 of them lived with a woman. Her name started with M, or something. The third one lived alone. They each seemed interesting and he looked forward to meeting them. Yet he was sad to leave this base, it was the first place he had found any semblance of peace. This was the way of things though, for this evenings empire would soon return into sand. It was funny, he thought, the only way to know oneself is to know others and yet these interactions are bound to cause pain. No interaction was permanent and yet the folly of man was to delude oneself into thinking otherwise. He yawned.  
  
The hall he walked down looked like all the others, a marvel of engineering. And yet their sterile sameness seemed to have forsaken humans, for nothing so perfect was meant for man. The only sounds were the perpetual echo of his feat falling gently on the floor. They produced a beat that a more poetic soul may have been able to set verse to, for the sound was so regular and so well defined. The harsh and fake lighting beat down upon his shoulders, casting a harsh reality on everything that wasn't as perfect as the identical halls. The lighting left no room for shadows or doubt of any kind. The air, although pumped from outside everyday, tasted stale and old. It smelled like a tomb, a tomb for beings far greater then man. His feat flowed artificially down the halls of perfection, left right. And yet his eyes told him that he repeated the same hall, over and over. It was Nietzsche's infinite regress or Hume's constant conjecture. The world seemed to flow within these halls, neither shifting nor changing, simply being. It reminded one of Sarte's no exit and the loss of eyelids, which block out others. No, there was no room for pleasant fallacies in this sterilized place of science.  
  
He finally arrived at the cage. Over the speaker came the voice of the usually voice, clear all platforms, test will soon engage, etc.. Then came the commanders voice. "Friends, today is the day. We have worked long and hard and today the fruits of our volitions will fall from the tree that we have planted. It is written that there are 2 elements to knowledge, thesis and gnosis. We have done all we can with thesis, it is up to gnosis now. Let this day be the mark of a new hope for the world and a new beginning for man. If we succeed we will reinforce the Japanese and contribute to the good of mankind. We have been at war, but not with our brothers and sisters, we are at war with ideas that wouldn't stay dead..." Everyone smiled at this, for this was one of the commanders favorite things to say. And they all knew what would come next. "Science killed Angels and Demons when Copernicus published the revolutions of the heavenly spheres and, in so doing, did what Lucifer could not, namely brought god to his knees. We shall reenact this battle now and, with this Eva, we shall once again become victorious. Let the fall again occur and the angels be banished back to fairy tales by the cold and unrelenting hand of science." Xeno couldn't hear the applause, but he felt the electricity in the air. He knew the all clapped.  
  
He then mounted his entry plug and was inserted into the instrument of his own downfall. After that things get confused. People ran in terror, fled from the inevitable. The alert symbol flashed on all the screens and the magi worked frantically, but to no avail. The world, the City on a Hill, receded into nothingness. This evenings empire returned into sand.  
  
Note; Few things. Depending on the response I get, I may or may not continue this ( It can stand alone and if that is what occurs, Xeno goes back to black) My spelling is a bit rough and I am sorry. I find it necessary to say now that I believe in essence. If you don't know what I mean, search for epistemology, essence verse essencelessness and see what comes up.... Also, I am playing Nietzsche rather oddly... There are like 7 different ways to read him scholarly and I picked the one I like best, so.... That's all...  
  
Oh yea, Mortlocks and Eloí are both written of by HG Well in the Time Machine. Um basically the Moerlocks make everything work but live in perpetual darkness and the Eloi are the higher class, who live in the light. But as price for their suffering, the Mortlocks eat the Eloi every so often... 


End file.
